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A project to honor D-Day: In search of living Central New Yorkers who were there

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The late Tommy Niland, a longtime Le Moyne College and a D-Day veteran, walks toward the grave sites of his cousins in 1998, at the American military cemetery in Normandy.
photo by frank Ordonez/ Tom Niland walks among the 9,000 crosses that memorialize the grave sites of the U.S. men who died during on the beaches Normandy during the American invasion of France. "I didn't come for myself", said Niland, who survived the battle, "I came for them".

Every year, as we approach the June 6 anniversary of the D-Day invasion, I remember a teenager named Albert Bruce Cassidy.
I wrote a column about Albert years ago, just before I traveled to France as part of a separate remembrance involving the Niland family and World War II. Albert grew up on Hall Avenue in Syracuse. He was an only child who left home to become part of the vast Allied force that collided with the war machine of Nazi Germany on the shoreline of Normandy.

Legend has it that for years after the war, his mother would take long walks each night on Valley Drive, seeking to exhaust herself, hoping to overwhelm a grief that made it impossible to sleep.

She and her son were in my thoughts when photographer Mike Greenlar and I began talking about putting together a special Syracuse D-Day project. To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the invasion, we're inviting any D-Day veterans in Central New York to meet us on May 29, at 11 a.m., at the memorial hall in the Onondaga County War Memorial.

The grave of Albert Cassidy, at the American military cemetery, Normandy.
He was an only child who died at Omaha Beach.Frank Ordonez | The Post-Standard

Mike will take portraits of each veteran. I'll be there to listen to the stories. We'll put all of it together into a package that will appear, around the time of the anniversary, in The Post-Standard and at Syracuse.com.

In his honor - and to remember why his mother walked Valley Drive each night - we need your help: Pass the word if you know someone who served Normandy. We'd love to see them, on the 29th, at the War Memorial.